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We Can't Afford To Not
Fix Justice System
By Benjamin Todd
Jealous and Lateefah Simon
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The
first number is the percentage of Black
Americans in the state and the second number
is the percentage of Black Americans making
up the prison population in that state.
Arkansas 16% Black —
52% in Prison
Georgia 29% Black — 64%
in Prison
Louisiana 33% Black —
76% in Prison
Mississippi 36% Black —
75% in Prison
Alabama 26% Black — 65%
in Prison
Tennessee 16% Black —
53% in Prison
Kentucky 7% Black — 36%
in Prison
South Carolina 30%
Black — 70% in Prison
North Carolina 22%
Black — 64% in Prison
Virginia 20% Black —
68% in Prison
The above
statistics are from Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.
at the weekly meeting of Operation
Rainbow/PUSH on 25 March 2011. |
Reforming the
nation's criminal-justice system is one of the most
urgent civil rights issues of our time. One shocking
fact illustrates why: More African-American men are
entangled in the criminal-justice system today than were
enslaved in 1850.
How did we get
here? The rise in America's penchant for punishment can
be traced as far back as the 1964 presidential campaigns
of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace, each of whom made
law and order a defining plank of his platform.
President Richard
Nixon continued the trend, framing Democrats as "soft on
crime" and pushing for tough law-enforcement policies in
opposition to President Johnson's credo of tackling
crime through a "war on poverty." "Doubling the
conviction rate in this country would do more to cure
crime in America than quadrupling the funds for [Hubert]
Humphrey's war on poverty," Nixon told voters.
Since then,
Republicans have pushed—and Democrats have embraced—a
so-called tough-on-crime approach to keeping us safe,
one that emphasizes harsh measures after crimes have
already occurred and that disproportionately punishes
poor and minority communities rather than addressing the
root causes of crime and preventing it in the first
place.
As a result, our
wrong-headed approach to justice and safety is breaking
the bank of pretty much every state and breaking the
spirit of communities across the country. Today the U.S.
accounts for 5 percent of the world's population but has
25 percent of the world's prisoners. We imprison almost
1 million more people than China, at a cost to taxpayers
of $68 billion in 2010.
This week the NAACP
released a new report called “Misplaced Priorities,”
demonstrating how state and federal spending decisions
are creating a generation that is both undereducated and
over-incarcerated. Between 1987 and 2007, nationwide
spending on higher education increased by a modest 21
percent. By contrast, corrections funding grew 127
percent during the same period, a rate that is more than
six times as great.
Turning locally,
California's prison spending has risen 25 times faster
than spending on higher education over the last 30
years. The state's prison population grew 500 percent
from 1982 to 2000, and California now attempts to manage
nearly 170,000 people in prisons designed to hold
83,000.
In the last 20
years, the cost of operating California's corrections
system skyrocketed from $2.3 billion in 1992-1993 to a
projected $9.3 billion budget in the 2011-2012 fiscal
year, with an additional $4 billion budgeted for
prison-infrastructure expenses. Ten percent of the
state's general-fund revenue now goes to the prison
system.
Nowhere is the
impact felt more deeply than in African-American
communities, where America's epidemic of mass
incarceration seemingly has removed entire generations
of African-American men from their communities. Today
500,000 black fathers are currently incarcerated in
America's prisons, and one out of every six
African-American men has spent time in prison.
African-American
girls and young women have become the fastest-growing
population of incarcerated young people in the country.
More than 2 million African Americans are currently
either in prison, in jail, on probation or on parole.
Our
criminal-justice system today undoubtedly functions much
like a racial caste system, as Michelle Alexander,
author of
The New Jim Crow:,
so aptly points out. Being labeled a felon effectively
strips away crucial rights from an individual, locking
him or her into second-class status indefinitely, unable
to vote, secure a good job or find safe and affordable
housing.
The current system
provides for little or no reintegration; it functions as
a revolving door, through which those who have served
time in jail or prison all too often quickly find
themselves back in, unable to overcome the many
obstacles they face when attempting to re-enter their
communities.
It is time to
recognize that our scorched-earth approach to public
safety has sent us down the wrong path. We need to be
smart about our policies and resources while keeping our
communities safe. Here are three steps we recommend to
ensure that public safety is a true civil and human
right for all of us:
Build Broad-Based Coalitions
It is no longer
enough for criminal-justice reform to be an issue of
concern only to criminal-justice reformists. We need to
bring to the table business leaders and advocates for
civil rights, education equality, women's rights and
families. We also need to work with people we have
traditionally considered to be unlikely allies in this
fight, such as law enforcement and business.
More and more,
leaders in law enforcement are calling for new ways to
keep our communities safe, and California's new attorney
general, Kamala Harris, is among those leading the
charge. We also need more grant makers to recognize the
connection between criminal justice and other social
problems they are aiming to alleviate, and invest
resources for maximum impact.
Eliminate Barriers to Employment
There is perhaps no
more effective tool for successful re-entry into society
than employment. Formerly incarcerated people who are
able to secure employment are one-third less likely than
their counterparts to end up back in prison or jail.
That is why both the NAACP and the
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco
Bay Area have launched new initiatives to meet this
challenge.
In California, the
NAACP worked to secure an administrative order from the
governor's office that removes questions about criminal
history from employment applications for most state
jobs. The Lawyers' Committee has launched a new clinic
to connect formerly incarcerated individuals with pro
bono attorneys from top law firms to address legal
barriers to re-entry and employment. We all win when we
ensure that those who have paid their debt to society
can have the tools they need to turn their lives around.
Reallocate Resources
In 2010 the NAACP
commissioned new rolling advertisements in various
California cities to draw attention to the disturbing
trend of spending more on jails than on higher
education. Former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
acknowledged this when he aptly noted, "Spending 45
percent more on prisons than on universities is no way
to proceed into the future ... What does it say about
any state that [it] focuses more on prison uniforms than
on caps and gowns?"
As states across
the country continue to struggle with budget crises, we
need to collectively call for shifting our funding
priorities from incarceration toward programs and
initiatives that will revitalize our communities.
It is our belief
that criminal-justice reform is one of the leading
issues in the fight to ensure equal opportunity for
communities in need. We cannot afford to wait another
generation to turn around decades of failed policies
that have caused our nation to hemorrhage money and
human potential. The exigency for policies that are
smart on crime — not just "tough on crime" — is now. It
is the only way we can achieve something we all want:
safe and healthy communities.
The NAACP has
released a report titled Misplaced Priorities that
details the challenges faced by the states because of
spending on incarceration over education. You can get a
full copy of the report
here.
7 April 2011
Benjamin Todd Jealous is
president and CEO of the NAACP. Lateefah Simon is
executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil
Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Source:
NPR
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Obama's America and the New
Jim Crow /
Michele Alexander—The New Jim Crow
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free
/ Coleman Hawkins—After Midnight
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. |
 |
Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move
toward colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 9 April 2011
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